Talel threw another knife. It slid its way through the armor of the Draesen, the enchanted edge slicing through the steel mail like it was paper. It stopped halfway into the grey-skin’s neck. Dark blood erupted as he slid off of his horse, landing near the first scout Talel had killed, a human.
The elf looked over his shoulder and nodded. Mardrel padded up, his sword drawn. He was followed by the rest of the scouts, who bore bows and crossbows.
“So far, so good,” Talel said to the captain.
Mardrel peered around the boulder, taking in the steep slope up to the enemy palisade, tracing the wooden fortifica-tions with his eyes until they disappeared into the night.
“Do you think we can remain hidden?”
Talel nodded. “Well enough to get close, yes. The problem will be getting away.”

Darathel stepped up to the door and held forth his hand. The darkness rippled like water, then faded, revealing a sun-lit room filled with furnishings. Darathel and Faedra stepped in. The dark curtain formed behind them. When it did, the room grew darker as well. A halo of light surrounded a bed on the far wall. As if seeing it for the first time, Darathel flinched, then walked toward it.
On the bed lay an elf, breathing slowly. His eyes were open, and he wore a grim expression, though he stared at nothing. Bedsheets covered him to his chest, but he wore no shirt. His head reclined on a pillow, and on his golden hair sat a detailed circlet of golden-white metal that glowed with its own light, illuminating the dark space.
“Can you hear me, father?” Darathel said.
The elf blinked, then looked at Darathel. His voice was clear and slow. “My son. It is good to see you. How long has it been?”
“A day.”
“So little time. It felt like years.”
“It might have been longer to you, King Pelanel,” Faedra said.

“What is there to sabotage, sir?”
Mardrel took his eye away from his telescope for a moment to look at Talel, who stood leaning against a charred tree trunk, his face wrapped against the chill of the fog that billowed per-petually from the Fay Lands close at hand.
“Much to sabotage,” Mardrel replied, “but very little we have the capacity to affect.” He handed the telescope to the scout and sat down on a nearby rock.
Talel brought the brass-barreled device to his eye. His grey cloak and gambeson made him blend in well with the tumbled stone and old ash of the burned-out grove, but he made a stark silhouette against the glow of the Fay. There, the trees grew of their own light, stretching in a golden green sheet behind the city.

What is Fake News? In the new paradigm, it is, simply, getting people to believe something that is not supported by facts or in contradiction to them. So it’s lying, right? It can be or it can not be, depending on whether you define lying in a purely empirical fashion (stating something that is explicitly false) or a normative fashion (deceiving someone in a hope to have the believe something false, while not necessarily saying explicitly false things). Sometimes the media lies outright, but usually they go the other route. Here is how it works, and how they (often) avoid…

Prince Darathel leaned over the table. His sword, made for his father’s hands, banged against the ancient wood and he moved it behind him nervously. Covering the table was an immense map drawn on canvas. Ghostly glowing points and clouds hovered over the surface, indicating where the enemy was camped and where its soldiers moved. The lamp above, filled with the ethereal light of the prim, flickered out for a few moments, dimming the relief of the castle and outer walls, leaving the blue-white of the enemy army on the map as the sole source of light in the room… or nearly so.

Enjoy this preview of Crown of Sight – releasing on March 22, 2019. More scenes to come in the following days! 1 Katach sat brooding upon his throne, its carved surfaces gilded with the treasure of his many conquests. Its bulk was held aloft on a wooden stand by two ranks of slaves, who bore it upon two great logs that sat upon their shoulders. Images of demons and human suffering ran up and down the back and sides of the great chair, a baroque cacophony of wicked iconography, dedicated wholly to the lord that sat upon it. Despite the…

My newest Novella, The Crown of Sight, will release on March 22 for 99 cents! You can pre-order on Amazon here. You can find all other retailers here. I’m very excited to bring this new book to market. A little bit about it: It’s part of a new series: the Eternal Dream Legends series. These will be stories that comprise the myths, legends, and tales of the mainline Eternal Dream sequence. I thought it better to tell some of these stories directly, rather than have to detail any importance through indirect exposition in the main books. If you want another…

Find me on the new social media site Social Galactic: https://socialgalactic.com/davidvstewart I’m excited for a new social media network that starts with basics and is small. One interesting feature: Right now there is a 1 MB upload limit across all parts of the site and posts for free users. This is intentional as images cause problems on large platforms with copyright infringement and illegal content (see gab). So right now, the focus is mostly on conversations, not memes, spam, or image wars.

I wrote Lined Paper after giving a short piece of advice on how to pace scenes so that they keep the interest of the reader: Hey David, how should I think about control “tempo” in writing? I’m bad at explaining things but I’m trying to write my NaNo and when I go back and look at stuff, I see that the scenes I like have a lot more detail in them and come across as slower, and the ones I’m more unsure about almost look like summaries of what happened than being, uh.. “present” in what is happening? Sorry if that…

Jim checked his phone out of habit as he rushed down the hall. Before he could see just how late he was, the screen dimmed. “Buggy piece of dogshit!” he said, shaking the infernal device, suppressing the desire to throw it through the 5th story window. For moment he decided on a compromise, agreeing with his inner demon to toss it in the trash and buy a new one after work, but before he could act, he found the phone tumbling out of his hand as he fell onto the floor. “What the fuck?” he said, twisting around on the…